Turns

Today was a good snow day. There have not been many of these this season; I think this is only the third, and as we're now into another warming trend with rain forecast for Friday I think that the kind will soon be the unkind.

Anyhow, I had made it a priority to get out boarding this morning before the snow got all chewed up and it was quite stunning. This year I've been working a lot on driving the board's edge through turns instead of sliding, keeping the edge facing the direction of travel and bending the edge to drive the turn. It's been awesome. Lots more power and a lot of the bumps get smoothed out as there's only the edge's profile slicing through rather than the entire rail.

As I was riding the lift up I saw some senior skiers, and I realized POW: there will be a day when I've dropped my last edge and can no longer ride. I'm young, I've got a very young kid; my daily reality doesn't include much bandwidth for introspection on the far off future. I mean, I think about the next 10-20 years, but not 30 or 40 years out. At least not much. When the thoughts do come they're of what my relationship with my family will be like, what about friends, what of this world? I forget that I won't always be able to play in gravity on bikes, boards, and on waves. And that realization hit me hard, not like a thought, but in the way that I know I'm going to have to let go of something that I truly love.

I saw a film years ago called "Extreme." It was an IMAX flick documenting the first generation of true extreme athletes. The first crews that were towing in on the outer reefs of the Hawaiian islands, the skiers and boarders that were opening up big descents in Alaska, and some others, too that I can't recall.

It really struck me, as these athletes were so eloquent about explaining and describing why they do these things. I remember one of the snowboarders saying something along the lines of "people see me do this and label it an escape, but I don't see it that way at all, for me it's an entry."

When I'm slotted on a wave, dancing down a hill on my snowboard, or zoned out on my mountain bike, it's an entry. I'm not sure what the place is, but I know it feels good. Like really good. Like really, really, really good. I've not found anything else that gets me there, so deep into my body and out of my mind with the law of gravity playing the music and my equipment my partner.

And feeling that, and then knowing that someday, it will be only a memory, that mind-riding is how I'll have to get my stoke, was a bitch-slap of reality.

So, to those fellow dancers, who get their groove out not on a flat dancefloor, but on a vertical one, here's to you, here's to the stoke. And if you just read this post and have no idea what I'm talking about, get on a board or a bike, and get good enough to let your body do the rest...

All Chickens are not Created Equal

As you may know, we've got 5 chickens. Started off as 6 but one got eaten a while back when the coop door get left open over night be yours truly.

Anyhow, the girls are almost a year old, and in that time we've had a chance to kind of get to know them. At least, enough to get to know that one of them is a few eggs short of a dozen, if you know what I mean.

We affectionatly call her "Loner" because she's often by herself while the other 4 are scratching around together.

And that's not the whole picture. The rest of it is that she just doesn't seem to get it. I mean, the 5 of them will be scratching around, then the 4 will move on, the loner will watch them walk away, and then when they're more than about 30 feet away, will start squawking. Why she squawks, or what she wants I'm not sure.

In the past, I would either herd or pick her up and carry her over to the others, though that often didn't solve the problem. Take for instance the day when she was in the fully wire-enclosed part of their coop last summer and the other 4 were a ways off scratching in the grass. She was in there looking at them and squawking, so I managed to get her out and carry her over to the others. No sooner was she there then she was squawking and running at full speed with wings flapping to get back into the coop. No sooner was she back in then she was looking out at the others squawking again.

Their current coop has a window in it. While the girls really like the window, Loner gets very confused by it and will often stand on the other side of it from the other chickens and squawk.

Last night, it was getting dark and I was taking the trash out so figured may as well shut the birds in for the night. 3 were already in the coop with the other 2 nearby. There's a large side door that swings open, and we prop this open so they can come and go during the day. At this point though, it was only open about 14 inches; certainly enough for a chicken to go through, and with the red heat lamp shining inside, easy enough to see inside. So I walked up to the birds and herded them toward the door. One went right in, but Loner kept right on trucking. I grabbed a broomstick, which we use as a herding staff, and followed her around the coop. She got to the window, squawked and tried to get in, then ran along as I cam nearer. Around to the other side and right passed the open part of the door to the front of the door. Jump and squawk. Repeat a couple of times until I opened the door a bit more.

You can also probably guess which bird was the last to start laying, and which one is the last one on any day to lay.

It's really quite funny; Kelly thinks that her egg "wasn't sat on enough" or that the box she was shipped in got shaken more than the others. I dunno, but I will say that when that racoon came by a couple weeks ago, it was the loner that got nabbed (and then rescued)...